Education, a fundamental aspect in the industry

By: Ing Camilo Botero*

ACAIRE, and the entire community that works in our guild, is projected towards the consolidation of knowledge spaces that allow professionals in the sector to strengthen and increase their management. For this, the Colombian Association has as one of its primary objectives the creation of the Colombian Institute of Air Conditioning and Refrigeration: ICAIRE and then, through agreements with universities, SENA and technological institutes, create master's degrees and diplomas with a theoretical-practical approach supported by easy-to-use mathematical models and solid concepts of thermal engineering.

Knowledge, the great challenge

To fulfill this mission, ACAIRE has a group of more than 40 teachers in all their specialties, who have taught a wide variety of courses, conferences and diplomas in the main cities of the country, through agreements with prestigious universities and institutions.

A curriculum is being consolidated to offer master's degrees that provide a solid training in the concepts of thermofluids, the basis of all disciplines that have to do with the performanceof professionals in our field. There will also be two emphases: one for air conditioning and one for refrigeration. Once the curriculum has been defined, it will be put to the consideration of the universities with which we have agreements, since they are the ones empowered by law to grant the master's degree.

It should be borne in mind that what the Colombian Institute of Air Conditioning and Refrigeration seeks is a training that trains professionals in the performance in their daily tasks, but without neglecting at all the theoretical foundation, implicit in this type of training

Aspects that can be improved

It is known that our educational system is more theoretical than practical and that conflicts with the previous concept. Through a teaching experience of 41 years where I have had the opportunity to teach in undergraduate, postgraduate, guild, on-the-job training and permanent attendance at many theoretical, theoretical-practical courses, I have been able to visualize the strength and weakness of each of these types of training.

The most important companies of our guild all have an institute assimilable to a university, where theoretical and practical training is given using one-dimensional and steady-state mathematical models that are the ones that allow to make the calculations for the designs and solutions in CVAR and also produce a wide variety of books, manuals, texts, articles and software, illustrating how to make calculations that represent,
reasonably, the ongoing project.

I do not know at all the importance of theoretical training in physics, mathematics, thermodynamics, heat transfer, fluid mechanics, turbomachinery etc., necessary to use with good judgment the linear equations that allow us to arrive at designs that work reasonably without incurring in conceptual errors, as some of our professionals sometimes do and, recently, bioclimatic architects when
design air conditioning solutions. The latter do not know in depth these disciplines.

Under this perspective, we propose to grant professionals, in the medium term, ACAIRE certifications in the different levels of knowledge and / or tasks that are carried out in our guild. These certifications will be given to technicians, technologists, resident engineers, maintenance engineers, assembly engineers, sales engineers and finally to designer engineers and consultants, through the process of completing and approving the subjects related to their specialization.

Building performance

In addition, the process of issuing a document that serves to define the good or bad performance of a building that could be called "The efficient building" has begun. This building would be framed within the rules of the efficient use of energy and the responsible management of the environment. The methodology could be called "Leadership in Energy and Environment", in which the following aspects would be taken into account, among others:

• Fundamental commissioning of energy systems.

• Responsible handling of refrigerants.

• Optimization of energy use behavior

• Renewable energies on site.

• Measurement and verification of building performance parameters.

• Storage and collection of recyclables.

• Management of the construction and use of recyclable materials.

• Indoor Air Quality Performance (IAQ)

• IAQ Management Plan

• Tobacco smoke control.

• Supervision of the outdoor air supply.

• Control of chemicals and contaminants

• Control of the lighting system.

• Use of overhead light.

• Thermal control and its design.

The last two years have seen a dizzying transformation in these technologies, not to mention climate change, the energy crisis that forces us to save energy to save money, sustainable design that makes us have to interact with owners, architects, engineers of all disciplines, commissioning, operation and maintenance, control systems that adapt thermal systems to the optimized use of energy under conditions at partial load.

All this current, with research of all kinds in renewable energies, means that we have to be in constant training and learning. As someone commented recently: you have to start teaching professions that still do not exist, today there are multiple careers that a couple of decades ago were not even known.

The challenge is to face this need for up-to-date knowledge. This task must be carried out by generating the programs from the guild and integrating them with the formally constituted academy at professional and technical levels.

EXPOACAIRE 2009

Be sure to participate in the largest event in the air conditioning, refrigeration and ventilation sector in Colombia: V EXPOACAIRE 2009.  The appointment will be on September 10, 11 and 12 in the city of Cali, Colombia, as an opportunity to decentralize the management of the Association and expand participation to all regions of the country.

During the event, a commercial exhibition will be held, in partnership with Tecnofrío, with a confirmed participation of more than 30 companies. In addition, within the framework of the fair, an extensive program of courses for specialists, keynote lectures, forums on current issues will be developed: cold chain, training, regulations, BPI, certification, Sustainable Design and technical conferences of the firms that will be exhibiting.

For more information visit the ACAIRE website: www.acaire.org

*About the author

Camilo Botero is the current president of ACAIRE and president of Camilo Botero Ingenieros Consultores Ltda. He has worked as a teacher in several Colombian universities, guilds and currently in ACAIRE in diploma courses of air conditioning projects, energy efficiency in air conditioning and refrigeration, cogeneration and trigeneration, applied psychometrics, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat transfer and turbomachinery.